


Dad's Office

by maximumsuckage



Category: Original Work
Genre: Creepy, Gen, Short One Shot, Spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 09:33:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15482823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximumsuckage/pseuds/maximumsuckage
Summary: Max knew that nobody was allowed in his father's office.  But that doesn't stop his curiosity.





	Dad's Office

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written September of 2017. Edited just now. Going through my short story file.

The door was not to be opened.  Max knew this.  His older brother knew this.  Dad said it was the office, but he rarely went inside.  And why would he need an office if every day he went to the city for work?

It was an ordinary door, in as much as a door could be ordinary.  It didn’t look like it was hiding anything.

The key weighted his pocket.  Max had found it in Dad’s bedside table when he had been looking for the TV remote.  The temptation had been too great to resist.

Max touched the wood, feeling the cool, polished finish under his fingers.  In a moment of bravery, he peeked through the old fashioned lock.  There was nothing there- there never was.  Nothing but the gray carpeting and the curtained window that looked over the back yard.  The corner of a desk was visible if he moved to the side enough, but that was all.

The curtains flicked in a breeze.  Max leapt back like he’d been burned, pressing his hands against the wall to steady himself.  “Nothing there,” he whispered to himself, heart pounding against his ribs.  “Dylan was just making crap up.”

Dylan was fond of making crap up.  He used his status as the eldest child as support for being wisest as well. Max was never sure which stories were true and which were false.  The story about bugs being able to survive without air was true- Max had kept a cricket in a jar for several days to test it, until his mother found the jar and threw the bug outside.  The story about the fourth grade teacher being a witch was false, Max was pretty sure.  She just liked long skirts and had a dream catcher, but witches were mean in _real_ fairytales.  Mrs. McKinney was one of the nicest teachers Max ever had. 

There was no way to prove the story that Dylan was telling about the monster behind the door though.  

He had whispered it one night, when he and Max were supposed to be sleeping.  “Remember how Grandma’s casket was closed at her funeral?”  His voice had been soft in the dark, muffled by the blankets.  “You know why?  Because that wasn’t Grandma in the casket.  Not anymore.”

Max had shivered in the dark, burying his head in the pillow.  He hadn’t wanted to think about Grandma even when she was alive.  Last time he’d seen her, he’d felt the imprint of the wooden spoon for weeks. 

Mom and Dad only let her visit on holidays after that.

“They had to close it to keep her trapped.” Dylan tapped his foot against the side of the bed in excitement of the tidbit he was divulging.  “Because when she died, something else took over.  Something evil and rotten.  Remember how she smelled that time we saw her?  Right before she died?”

Max did remember.  It had been a stark white hospital room.  A heart monitor beeped a slow cadence.  Grandma already smelled of rot.

“Imagine that times ten.  Times one hundred!  Even though she was dead and rotting, she wouldn’t leave.  That’s why they had to close her casket.  To keep her trapped.  Dad said, ‘she might refuse to go to Hell, but she can’t stay here.’”

“But she’s buried now.”  Max felt very exposed, despite a heavy comforter and a sixty percent certainty that Dylan was telling stories again.  “She can’t do anything six feet under.”

“When you’re alive you can’t.”  Dylan dropped his voice into a low growl.  “But when you’re dead, you don’t have any pain.  You can claw at the coffin ‘til the flesh is gone from your fingers and you break through the wood.  Mom and Dad _told_ me.  They were at the grave to put down flowers and all of a sudden they saw something white. It was Grandma’s… boney… _fingers_.”

“But-”

“They couldn’t leave her there, because she’s Dad’s _mom_ , but they couldn’t let her go, because her face was all rotting and full of maggots that had eaten her eyes.”

“So-”

“So have you ever wondered why we aren’t allowed in Dad’s office?”  Pleased with his story, Dylan had gone to sleep, but Max had remained awake.  He stared at the dark ceiling, trying not to imagine Grandma’s flesh-stripped fingers clawing through the office door. 

He dreamt of maggots dripping from Grandma’s mouth as she stood over him while he slept.

Now Max stood, staring at the door.  The key was heavy in his palm; a thousand pound weight instead of a tiny piece of metal warmed by his pocket.

Swallowing hard, he pressed his ear against the door.  All he could hear was his own pounding heart, amplified by the wood.

The key fit in the lock perfectly.  “Just a peek,” Max promised himself.  “Just to prove that Dylan’s a liar.”

His fingers trembled against the key.  He bit his lip until he tasted blood.  Boney fingers and maggoty eyes dared him to turn the lock. 

Max pulled the key out of the lock and fled to the living room.  He turned on the cartoons loud as they would go and promised himself that he would look tomorrow for sure. 

 


End file.
